


Selfish Reasons

by Sitary



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, Spoilers for Words of Radiance, WoR spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23563852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sitary/pseuds/Sitary
Summary: Sighing, he looked back up. “You’re really going to make me climb that.”“Yes,” Adolin nodded. “For perfectly selfish reasons.”He looked at him.“Look at me,” Adolin signalled to himself. “I’m battered, exhausted, dirty, and ragged. I am not letting the last thing you see in your life is me in this poor state. It’s very undignified. I should look my best.”---Or, what would happen if Adolin had fallen down into the chasms with Kaladin instead of Shallan.
Relationships: Kaladin/Adolin Kholin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 154





	Selfish Reasons

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-divergence for WoR. All characters belong to Brandon Sanderson, bless him.  
> Some of the wording is similar if not exact to the chapters I'm basing this fic of, to mantain the atmosphere. Most of it came out of my crazy head.  
> English is not my main language, feel free to comment on any errors you may find.  
> Enjoy.

Kaladin gasped and opened his eyes, and the pain crawled inside. Suddenly, his entire body hurt.  
The opening at the top of the chasms filled his entire vision. A mocking blue strip of light, high above him. This far out onto the Shattered Plains, the chasms here were hundreds of feet deep. Groaning he sat up, his entire body protesting, that blue strip of light impossibly distant. He’d been swallowed by darkness, his surroundings obscure. He put a hand on his head. Nausea and dizziness invaded him, but with a little bit of luck, he wouldn’t be seriously hurt.  
Although it wasn’t just luck. I absorbed stormlight right at the end, he realized, his memory hazy. That had saved his life.  
But that scream… Oh no Syl, what had happened?  
Check for wounds, his father’s teachings whispered from the back of his mind. He went through the motions of checking his body for breaks, worrying that he may have just gone into natural shock with an internal bleeding. Luckily, he concluded his ailment was pure soreness, bruises that were quickly fading, and overall pain of being dropped into the bottom of a chasm. The natural.  
Reluctantly, he fished in his pocket for spheres. He didn’t want to light up the darkness, he didn’t want to face the reality waiting for him at the spark of a light. He wasn’t even sure how much time had been since the fall, but he was certain that the only thing down here with him was corpses. Was Dalinar among them? Adolin had been running towards his father, wearing his bright shardplate. He couldn’t recall if he saw him jump at the end.  
Standing up made the world tilt on its edge. Even in the darkness, he felt nausea climb up his trachea and clamp onto his brain. He had to support his weight on the wall of the chasm for a couple of breaths before everything felt back into place, leaving Kaladin with an uncharacteristically need of throwing up Rock’s stew from last night. Deep breaths, focus on the air reaching your lungs, move your head side to side to stretch your neck, he obeyed his father’s voice without complaining but very much ignoring for the time being the pile of bodies that waited for his inspection.  
A mount of lords, ladies and scribes were distributed on the chasm floor, disfigured by the drop, bones exposed, threw like rag dolls in unnatural positions. He could only hope that they died immediately; that they didn’t suffer a slow death from blood loss, or a punctured lung. Those in worst shape were the ones crushed by either both halves of the bridge, one of them suffocating the pile closer to him and one further away on the chasm with its own number of casualties. He could practically hear the wet crunch as those bodies hit the floor, only to be crushed farther by the logs falling over them.  
He shook the image from his head, bending down to inspect the bodies. No Dalinar in sight. He let himself believe that he was safe and sound on his way back to the camp, if not already there.  
He took some extra spheres from the dead, trying to infuse himself with stormlight to chase away the pain.  
Nothing came.  
Trying harder, panic clutched at his chest. Not again, he pleaded, don’t let this happen again.  
Nothing.  
Kaladin let out a growl of frustration, scattering the spheres in a wide arc in front of himself. The sound as they hit rock resonated through the corridor as sure as thunder. A highstorm is due tomorrow, he remembered with rising panic. The spheres illuminated the hall in front of him, casting disturbing shadows over the bodies in the chasm floor. He couldn’t help but staring at the mix of faces, some familiar, some not much. There was a scribe who had been trading words with Shallan just moments before the bridge fell, a brightlord who had been talking with Dalinar when Kaladin had interrupted him that morning to give a report, a lady whose body had fallen over a shardplate gauntlet…  
Shardplate.  
Adolin.  
Kaladin sprinted to the part of the bridge further from him where the gauntlet was sticking out from. The hand was immobile, cracked in several parts, devoid of stormlight. Moving the bodies away, he could clearly make out the figure of the princeling, his head turned away from him, crushed beneath the bridge.  
No, no. The shardplate had to protect him. It had to.  
Using all his strength, he heaved the bridge only to be left with sore arms. The storming thing was stuck, and lifting it was nearly an impossible task without stormlight. He tried once, twice without success. “Storming thing, just move!” He grunted, using his entire body to push the thing away. Finally, blessedly, the bridge began moving upwards in an achingly slow arc. Kaladin grinned in triumph, and only then noticed the gauntleted arm by his side of the bridge, gripping the bridge. He looked down, meeting the bright eyes of Adolin Kholin, staring at him beneath a crushed useless, helmet, face strained with effort.  
“I’ve been yelling for help until my throat became sore. What were you doing, taking a nap?” The Kholin boy rasped out, having the audacity to flash him a smile, if even a wavering one.  
Oh, Kaladin was tempted to drop the bridge back on his face.  
He grunted in annoyance, but kept pushing the bridge upwards and sideways, Adolin helping with his free arm. After what felt an eternity, the highprince could crawl his way from under the bridge while Kaladin strained his muscles to keep the storming bridge from falling over him again.  
“Get this off me,” Adolin grunted once he was able to move away, signalling to his shardplate.  
“You are welcome,” Kaladin grunted back, dropping the bridge down, flexing the blood back into his fingers.  
“Just get this off me!” Adolin insisted, the alarm in his voice springing Kaladin to action. He looked for dangers around the boy as he crouched in front of him, but found only corpses.  
Adolin clawed at his broken chestplate, his face pale, his breathing fast. Kaladin worked diligently, undoing the almost invisible straps pulling the plates together. Getting out of the armour was easy than getting in it, but Adolin wasn’t helping, trying to go even faster.  
“Calm down,” Kaladin said, pushing his broken gauntlets away, which were not helping him removing the plate any faster.  
“I am storming calm,” Adolin breathed out, not calm at all.  
Kaladin eyed him, worried the boy might be hurt. Taking off the armour was easy without Adolin’s intervention. The chestplate was broken in three pieces, no stormlight coming out of it, explaining why he hadn’t freed himself in the first place. One of his boots and his right gauntlet were completely devoid of stormlight as well, leaving him stranded without usable armour. Soon enough Adolin was sitting down, his back against the chasm wall, an oddly bright sight among the floor of corpses. Kaladin watched as the princeling closed his eyes, his chest moving sporadically in irregular ups and downs. Looking from him, to the broken armour, to the bridge, he was haunted with the image of Adolin, trapped in the very thing that was supposed to keep him alive, feeling as the plates crunched further closer to his skin, confining him below in the middle of nowhere, forgotten, surrounded by corpses.  
He’s having a panic attack, a voice that sounded too close to Lirin’s scolded in his mind.  
Kaladin crouched, raising his palms up against Adolin’s murder gaze.  
“Breathe deeply, ignore everything around you.” Kaladin instructed, for once glad of the easiness in which his voice came completely devoid of feelings. It wasn’t a soothing one by all means, but it wasn’t a worrying one either. “Adolin, Adolin, focus on me.”  
Blue eyes snapped to his own brown ones, and after a few moments, Adolin matched his own breathing; deep through the nose, out slow through the mouth. Kaladin kept his attention like this, nodding his approval. Once he considered Adolin stable enough, he moved slowly to take one of the other’s wrists between his hands. Immediately, Adolin snapped his hand away.  
“I just need to check your pulse,” Kaladin explained, as calmly as possible. He ignored momentarily the predicament they were in, the possibility of a chasmfiend turning the corner, attracted by the smell of rotting fresh, and the reality of a highstorm coming just a little more over than a day away. Trapped in a pit, Kaladin had to be a soldier more than ever, and couldn’t pretend he was the surgeon he never got the chance to be. Not for much longer, at least.  
“I am fine,” Adolin muttered stubbornly, even though his hands were shaking.  
“Your father,” Kaladin asked then, watching as Adolin ran a hand through his own hair, wincing in pain in the process. Splinted arm? Broken rib? The surgeon that didn’t want to leave his head asked.  
“One of your men got to him before I did.” Was the answer, and Kaladin couldn’t help but feeling incredibly proud of Bridge Four.  
“Then why are you down here, instead of up there?” Kaladin gestured around themselves.  
“Shallan,” Adolin admitted, having the decency of looking mildly ashamed under Kaladin’s glare. “She was on the bridge, and I wasn’t about to let her die on the fall.”  
“Well, her body isn’t here. I must assume she was smart enough to step away from the bridge.” Kaladin mused, signalling with his hands to the highprince. “Lift your arms for me”  
“What in storms for?” Adolin grunted, crossing his arms over his chest.  
Logically speaking, they were alone down there in the chasm, and Kaladin could kill him. No one had to know.  
“You lifted your arm and winced; you clearly are in pain. Let me check.” He said instead, swallowing the murder intent with great difficulty.  
Adolin waved him off, stubbornly standing up instead, using the chasm wall for support. “I fell down here, with a plate. I am alive. Any pain I have is residual, just bruises most likely.”  
Kaladin really wanted to kill him. Where could he even start telling him all the reasons as to why his statement was incredibly wrong? There were a million instances as to how he could be very much hurt and bleeding as they spoke. However, that might raise the question as to how was Kaladin alive, exactly. He may not consider Adolin the brightness, but once the shock wears out, he will ask questions. Better delay them until he could come out with a plausible excuse.  
“You heard the horns as well?” Adolin was pacing in circles not so far ahead, looking upwards at the fast darkening sky. He cradled his right arm against his chest. Kaladin immediately added five more ways as to how he could be dying to his mental list. “Parshendi.”  
“Your father must have fended off the attack. Otherwise the number of corpses down here would be greater,” Or they’re rotting on the surface. “Between that and the assassination attempt, it’s no wonder Dalinar pushed back to the camps.” Kaladin sighed, looking up as well. “Especially with a highstorm coming.”  
“He must know I survived, though.” Adolin muttered, a hint of pain in his voice.  
“Yes, he must. A shardbearer is more than likely to survive a fall with an intact set of plate.” Kaladin pointed out, looking at Adolin once again. “He is also more than likely to be able to claw his way up the chasms, which is not the same as surviving in the plains amongst Parshendi attacks, assassins looming, and a highstorm not one day away.” He added, cocking an eyebrow.  
Adolin blushed, looking ashamed once again, “The most logical approach is to retreat. I suppose you’re right.”  
“I know I am” Kaladin grunted in response, feeling Adolin glaze drill onto the back of his neck as he moved to walk away. Further away, he saw corpses of Parshendi and soldiers mixed on the floor. With relief, he didn’t see any faces he recognized, and was able to retrieve a slightly battered spear from them. “Let’s go. We are too far out for a corpse-recovery operation, so we need to make haste and be closer to camp before we can call for help. I believe this is the way.”  
He had reached the further intersection when he stopped, cursing Adolin with all his might. Turning back, the princeling was not only not following him, but he was also down on his knees, collecting his shardplate, wincing with each turn of his torso.  
“Really?” Kaladin growled, walking back. Adolin stared daggers at him.  
“Yes, really. I am not about to let a shardplate lie down here unclaimed, when a highstorm is coming not two days away. It will wash it away with the rest of this mess. We have to take it all, otherwise someone could find it and regrow it faster with the entire set of plate. Then the king will have one less shardbearer. Is that what you really want?” Adolin snapped at him, venom in his words.  
Both men stared each other down. Kaladin knew the highprince was right. It was logical not to leave such a powerful armour lying around, but he couldn’t bring himself to give him reason. He should have thought of it himself, and that made him even angrier. Finally, he deflated, nodding in agreement, crouching down to help.  
“Say it,” Adolin growled, his eyes still fixated on Kaladin.  
“What?” Kaladin answered, drilling his own gaze back to Adolin’s infuriating face.  
“Say that I’m right, bridgeboy,” Adolin’s lips turned into a defiant smirk, his eyes burning a hole in Kaladin’s own. “Then, I’ll answer ‘I know I am’ in that same condescending tone you just used.”  
Kaladin balled his hands into fists, holding the princeling gaze. It revolted him, those piercing blue eyes, that perfect boy smile. It reminded him of so many brightlords that looked down on him just for existing, just for having the audacity of being born a darkeyes. He hated it. And he hated it most because Adolin was nothing like so many others. He hated it because, in this moment, Kaladin had it coming.  
Storm this man.  
Instead, of punching Adolin in the face, which would have made him happier than anything else in his miserable life, he started looking for pieces of clothing he could strip from corpses, earning a questioning look from the princeling.  
“Doesn’t my father pay you enough for you not to have to strip the dead?” He asked, disgusted.  
“Are you planning on carrying your shardplate all the way back and up the chasm?” Kaladin answered, tying the broken rags together with more force than necessary. Adolin still looked disgusted, but offered no further commentary.  
Kaladin fashioned a sort of bag, fitting the plates unceremoniously inside, watching with great delight as Adolin winced each time one of those hit the bottom with a loud ‘clank’. Storming brat care more about that thing than for Kaladin. Once it was full, he secured it, tying it with piece of rope that he salvaged from the remains of the bridge. It was long enough to slip up his shoulder, dragging the bundle around the chasm floor.  
Adolin snatched the rag bag from Kaladin’s hands, slipping over his own shoulder instead, hissing through his teeth in pain in the process.  
Kaladin pretended not to notice, and walked on. 

He knew the camp was west of their location, so, in theory, all they had to do was walk westwards. The only problem was, without the sun to guide them, where would west be? He had managed to tie up some spheres to the end of his spear as a sort of improvised lantern, illuminating their path onwards. After a long walk in painfully tense silence, not that Kaladin minded, he stopped dead at an intersection, gathering his thoughts. Which direction had he turned last? He frowned up those immense walls, at least two hundred feet up, and very little time to afford getting lost down there.  
He shouldn’t get lost. The chasms were his. He had claimed them, all those nights ago. He shouldn’t get loss.  
“You are lost,” Adolin’s rasped voice sent a chill down his spine. Kaladin knew he was already on edge, but the fact that he was trapped down here with that spoiled brat put him in an even worse mood. Syl would probably scold him if she were here.  
Thinking about Syl did not help his mood at all.  
“I am not lost,” Kaladin growled, inspecting the storming corridors to each side of him. Which one was it?  
“You are so lost, and we are going to die down here.”  
“Do you have a better idea?” Kaladin bit, turning back to stare at Adolin tensing up for a fight, but blinking back in surprise instead. Adolin looked in worse shape than before. Paler, straining to carry his shardplate, breath coming in spams out of his chest. Kaladin forced his guilt down to the pits of his stomach; he really should have done something about his pain.  
“I could climb,” Adolin suggested, and Kaladin could not be more flabbergasted about the stupidity of the idea. “I can make steps with my shardblade, and we’d be out of the chasms in no time.”  
“Oh, yes what a wonderful idea.” Kaladin crossed his arms, glaring at the princeling. “You could climb, without shardplate since yours is rendered useless, with an injury that you refused to let me treat, which, by what I can see, limits your blade arm mobility.”  
Adolin flushed red. “It’s still a better idea than whatever path you’re leading us down.”  
“Let me tell you how your plan will work out, brightlord.” sneered Kaladin. “You will climb high enough, propelled by your sheer amount of stubbornness and refusal to listen to reason, you’ll slip or your injured arm will give out and you’ll plummet to your death down here. So, I’ll have to go out to your father, dragging your armour, blade and corpse, and tell him ‘Yes your son was completely idiotic and his pride killed him’. He’ll be thrilled, I’m sure.”  
“You survived.” Adolin accused, bright blue eyes narrowed to slits, glaring at Kaladin with pure mistrust. “I fell down here in shardplate, and I’m lucky to be alive. You? You have nothing, and yet you look as if you’ve just gotten out of bed and had a warm bath.”  
Kaladin was reminded once again how different even their morning routines were. He stepped closer to Adolin, moving to snatch the bundle with the shardplate from him, but the princeling moved back, putting more distance between them.  
“I knew there was something up with you, bridgeboy. How did you survive? How come you are unharmed?”  
I wouldn’t say unharmed, Kaladin thought bitterly. Syl’s absence never felt so real as it was walking down there, cold, limbs numb and having to defend himself in front of his highness in front of him.  
“Luck?” Kaladin offered, trying to get the bundle off Adolin once again. Once more, Adolin clumsily stepped back, straining against pain. “Spren were floating around the bridge before we fell. Maybe they saved me. According to folktales they have the audacity to help people in need.”  
Adolin snorted, something very uncanny of the Alethi propriety. Oddly, Kaladin thought it suited the boy. “That’s a cart full of Chull’s dung and you know it, bridgeboy. How did you survive the fall?” Suddenly, he let out a broken, rasped laugh. “Oh, you didn’t, didn’t you? I’ve heard that people in shock see things. Is that what you are? Am I imagining you?”  
“Hallucinating,” Kaladin corrected, then cursed himself for doing so. Adolin was clearly in shock, that for sure. The pain must be getting worse. “And you are not hallucinating me. Believe me, I would love to be a hallucination for you, brightlord. I would love to just be a figment of your broken mind while, in reality, be safe and sound among my men. But I’m not. I’m here and I don’t want to deal with you losing your head. Stay focused.”  
“I am focused,” retorted Adolin. Surprisingly, his eyes were indeed focused, his stance solid. Maybe he wasn’t in so much pain, but rather just tired, dehydrated probably. If only Kaladin had been able to inspect him before. “And what I’m focusing on is how you, storming man, survived a fall that killed everyone else on that bridge. I knew there was something wrong with you, and I’m not moving until you admit it.”  
Kaladin snorted. “Oh, there’s something wrong with me, isn’t it? That’s always the case. Always the same with you people. The darkeyes is dangerous, if things go well for him there must be something wrong. Something else may be at hand, isn’t that right?” On the back of his mind, he scolded himself. Adolin was right after all, something else was indeed the cause of his survival. But the princeling didn’t know it, and Kaladin’s pent up rage didn’t care for it.  
“Oh, stop making everything about your status!” Adolin snapped, throwing his hands in the air, dropping the bundle in the process. Kaladin could only laugh, a cold, dangerous laugh that sounded strange to his own ears, at how offended he dared look.  
“Me? This is not about me making everything about my status. You are the people who judge us because we had the bad luck of being born like this.”  
“This is not about darkeyes, bridgeboy, this is about you and your insufferable way of being and treating everyone like we personally offended you.”  
“Everything is about darkeyes, brightlord. How you treat us, when we do something that any lighteyes would be applauded, you punish us and throw us into slavery.”  
“When have I ever done that!” Adolin demanded.  
“Not you Adolin, your entire class. You all do the same things, and you all benefit from it.”  
“Oh please,” he complained. “The world isn’t fair, is that what you’re telling me? You surprise me bridgeboy, I didn’t know such thing was possible. What a huge revelation! We are all living in a world that is unfair!”  
Kaladin didn’t answer. He was tired of helping him. He had saved his life back below the collapsing bridge. He had tried to inspect him from wounds, Adolin refused. He was trying to lead them to safety, and Adolin just was itching for a fight. Spoiled brat. So be it. He could storming die down here if he wanted. He turned back to keep walking, choosing a corridor at random, but the princeling grabbed his arm, forcing him to face him once again.  
Kaladin used all his might to not punch him in his perfect face. Instead, he just stared him down. It was satisfying to be reminded that of the both of them, Kaladin was taller.  
“So, the world isn’t fair,” Adolin continued, unfazed by Kaladin’s glare. “I know it. We all know it. People tend to ignore it. But guess what? My father is doing his earnest to try and tip the scales, and by the Almighty I’m trying to help him.”  
“Besides,” he continued without a pause, spitting his worlds in a dangerous growl that made Kaladin want to grab him and shake him in his place. “You use it as an excuse. The world is not fair to you, is not fair to any darkeyes, so you use it as an excuse to be an insufferable, brooding, hateful man. You’ve been mistreated, I know that. My father knows that. Guess what? The same lighteyes that mistreated you left me and my father to die in these hateful plains against our common enemy. But you, oh you keep making our grudge be about eye colour instead of admitting you just don’t want to make the effort of consider us as people rather than class. You refuse to even consider that maybe people don’t like you, not because of your eye colour, but because you are a huge pain in the neck.”  
Kaladin’s hold on his spear tightened to frightening levels. If he focused, he could hear the wood splinter with each word that Adolin spat at him. Kaladin moved to leave, but Adolin held him tighter in place. His grasp was firm, but weakened due to exhaustion, so Kaladin could have broken it easily. However, down to the pure rage of being manhandled like a slave again, he fisted his free hand on Adolin’s shirt, pulling him closer and upwards, closer to his face. It made him extremely happy that the princeling had to step on his toes not to be thrown off-balance.  
“Go on then,” Adolin challenged. To Kaladin’s shock, Adolin’s light blue glaze showered over him like a freezing bucket on a hot day. In some part of Kaladin’s mind, one that he had fought to ignore since the very first day he had seen Adolin in the streets of Sadeas’ camp, recognized how, even battered, pained and enraged, Adolin still looked bright. Handsome. “Hit me, break my nose. Beat me to a pulp. You know I’m right and we both know we aren’t men of words anyway.”  
Back in the day, Lirin would have been outraged. Kaladin wouldn’t hurt another in retaliation. Lirin never did. Even when the town turned against him, he didn’t. He never did.  
Kaladin’s grip on Adolin tightened.  
“You hate me.” Kaladin growled, their faces close enough to touch. “You don’t trust me. You just see me as the slave who came out of the gutter. Whatever your selfish reasons are, you were just waiting for the first opportunity to tell the world just how much you don’t see me as a person, but as someone who, no matter how many times proves to you that wants to protect you, that wants to keep you, your brother and your father safe, you just won’t trust. You don’t trust me.”  
Kaladin was surprised to hear hurt in his own words.  
Adolin seemed, finally, blessedly, at a loss for words. Kaladin let go of him and watched as he stumbled to regain his posture without falling on his rear end. Adolin looked away, sighing in defeat. The monster of rage that was clawing his way out of Kaladin’s chest slowly receded, leaving him with a bitter taste on his mouth. Syl would have his ear if she were here.  
The realization that he didn’t want to leave things with Adolin like this struck him like lighting on a highstorm. Especially when there was a great possibility that he was the last person he would ever see before dying.  
He ignored the other sudden realization, the one that didn’t consider this fact to be such a bad one.  
“Listen,” Kaladin added softly, a murmur that echoed as well as any scream amongst the chasms. “I understand where you come from. I probably wouldn’t trust myself at first either if I were you. You can feel however you want about me.” Kaladin sighed, suddenly aware of how close they were standing. He stepped away. “Besides, I know you and your father are trying. You are doing good work; I know you aren’t as bad as the others.”  
Adolin looked back up at him, cocking an eyebrow. Defiant little brat. “Not as bad as the others? Well, thank you very much for the compliment.” He rolled his eyes, releasing his grip con Kaladin’s arm. Kaladin pretended not to notice the coldness that spread through it in its place. “Say I am all those things you claim. That doesn’t change the fact that you are insufferable and insolent.”  
Kaladin shrugged, drawing an empty laugh from the princeling. It didn’t sound right on him.  
“That’s it? Just a shrug?”  
“I am what you all make me to be.”  
“Oh, I see!” Adolin sneered. “You just aren’t to blame for any of your problems.”  
“I’d say not.” Kaladin retorted, the imminent need to choke Adolin returning with much too ease.  
“Stormfather. You are just unbelievable. Nothing I can say or do will change your view on life will it? You say I don’t trust you, but no amount of good deeds I do, no matter how much your own men might like me, you just will continue to see me as the spoiled, entitled brat that you have imagined me to be. You are odious, full of spite. How lonely your life must be.”  
Kaladin felt his face turn beet red under the glow of the spherelight. And he was supposed to be the insolent one? “I am starting to revise my opinion, of you not being as bad as the others.”  
“Oh, don’t lie.” What was that? “You don’t like me. You never did. You can’t even stand the sight of me.”  
“That’s because-”  
Whatever lie he was about to spit was cut off as both of them looked onwards, to the darkness that Kaladin had started to walk to. A faint, distant noise, as of scraping, grew louder.  
Kaladin immediately put his hand over his improvised lantern plunging them into darkness. Beside him, Adolin extended his hand sideways, as if to summon his blade, but quickly retracted, hissing through his teeth in pain. Kaladin stepped between him and whatever laid ahead.  
The scraping continued. A sound like rock on rock. Or… carapace on rock.  
“I guess,” Adolin whispered behind him. Kaladin gave him points for keeping the nervousness out of his voice. “Having a shouting match in echoing tunnels was not our brightest idea.” (LOL)  
“Yeah.”  
“It’s getting closer.”  
“Yeah.”  
“We need to run.”  
The scraping seemed just beyond the next turn.  
“Yeah.”  
Kaladin snatched the shardplate bundle and lifted it over his shoulder, thrusting his spear on Adolin’s hands. He grabbed the princeling’s arm and dashed into a run.

Kaladin scrambled down the paths, leaping branches and refuse, splashing through puddles. Adolin kept up with him gracefully, despite the obvious pain creeping to his face. In that moment, Kaladin was glad he was stuck with the young man down here instead that with, say, his betrothed. He didn’t know if he could protect an inexperienced person against the chasmfiends without stormlight.  
Kaladin still kept back his pace, matching Adolin’s struggling one. If the princeling noticed any changes in his stride, he kept mostly for himself. Kaladin was glad, he didn’t want to have another shouting match while running for their lives. Choosing paths at random, they barely stopped for a breath at intersections. Kaladin couldn’t be bothered to check if they were going in the right direction. He only needed to know if they were still being followed.  
They were. He grabbed Adolin’s wrist and darted down another corridor, the noise of the shardplate clunking against the floor louder in his ears than ten highstorms together.  
“This way,” Adolin yanked his arm down the opposite corridor he would have chosen at the next intersection. Avoiding the need to argue, he followed him.  
Just like that, the princeling took the lead, leading them in corridors that looked oddly familiar to Kaladin. Leaping over a puddle, he realized he knew these corridors, they had travelled them not too long ago.  
Adolin was leading them in circles, back to the start. Back to the corpses.  
Kaladin matched the princeling step, keeping his ears open in case the scratching grew louder. Hopefully it would be distracted. Hopefully they would lose it. Hopefully-  
Rounding the corner, Adolin almost ran into the chasmfiend itself.  
By instinct, Kaladin yanked him back, back clashing onto chest, taking the air out of his lungs. He felt his own back hit the chasm wall and grunted in pain. Adolin gasped for air, but Kaladin clasped one of his hands against his mouth, pushing their bodies even closer.  
His grip on the shardplate bundle slipped in the struggle. Kaladin cursed on the inside. The chasmfiend would surely come chasing the sound if that thing were to fall to the ground. He struggled to regain his breath, ignoring the panic rising in his throat, ignoring the pain on the parts of him that had hit rock, and specially ignoring the other parts of himself that were pressed tight against Adolin. Focusing on his breathing didn’t help, so he concentrated on Adolin’s instead. He seemed to be keeping it together, his chest raising and lowering at a regular pace. Although his breathing rubbed their bodies in all the wrong places, and he still had Adolin’s lips pressed firmly against his hand-  
He risked a peak around the corner, preferring to watch at the chasmfiend rather than to keep down that trail of thought. The monstrous creature chewed on the corpses left in their fall. It had probably smelled them way back, and took another more direct route, beating Kaladin and Adolin to them. It would be like a feast for a creature that size.  
He glanced back at Adolin and found those icy blue eyes were glaring at him, the princeling’s good arm gripping Kaladin’s own. Oh, the boy was downright offended, probably due to being manhandled by Kaladin of all people. Kaladin couldn’t suppress a smirk, and Adolin managed to look even more displeased. Despite the delight he was feeling on holding the other like this, Kaladin released his grasp, promptly ignoring the way that Adolin’s mouth was all red and swollen, and signalled down the corridor.

They walked in silence until the crunching of bones was inaudible, until their legs barely held them up, and exhaustion was clutching to their bones with unbearable agony. Kaladin was holding the shardplate awkwardly in his arms rather than just dragging it behind himself, worried the creature might hear them and come sniffing around. Did chasmfiends sniff? Shallan Davar would probably know. He made them walk restlessly until the sky was completely dark, and nothing but the noises of the night surrounded them. Adolin didn’t even mutter any form of protest, but when Kaladin looked back to propose stopping for the night, he froze in place.  
The princeling walked much farther behind than before, barely illuminated by the spherelight, cradling his right side, frowning in pain. His skin was an alarming white, a stark contrast against the darkness surrounding them. Cursing himself, Kaladin left the shardplate and spear resting aside and rushed to the man.  
“You should have left me inspect you,” Kaladin scolded, both to Adolin and himself. He took the princeling’s good arm and draped it across his own shoulders, and any protest the other might have was drowned by the hiss of pain he let out instead. Kaladin supported both their weights, his right hand carefully placed on Adolin’s damaged side, just below his rib. The skin there had a nasty bruised mix of colours.  
He walked them closer and made the other sit down on a dry patch of rock near the light, his back rested against the wall.  
“Lift your arms, and don’t you dare complaining. This would have been easier if you just had listened to me before.” He threatened under Adolin’s murder gaze.  
Despite the warning, Kaladin still braced himself for protest and whining, both traits of Alethi high-class and its propriety. Surprisingly, Adolin raised his arms slowly over his head without so much as a complain, although his breath caught in his throat for the effort. Humming approvingly, Kaladin made quick work of removing the highprince’s shirt, leaving it carelessly aside. Kaladin had treated many men and women back in his days. He had even looked over his bridgemen wounds more often than not. Logically speaking, he was completely familiar with male anatomy. So, naturally, he did not let his eyes wander down Adolin Kholin’s figure. He simply didn’t. The once surgeon helped Adolin lower his arms crossing them one over the other. He almost didn’t notice Adolin’s look of surprise.  
“What?” Kaladin asked, stealing a gaze over at his infuriating blue eyes.  
“I didn’t know you could be delicate, that’s all.” Adolin answered, a mix of smugness and curiosity tingling in his voice, a smile forming in his lips.  
“Comes from another life,” Kaladin answer shortly, trying to keep the mixed feelings that other life brought to his mind. He didn’t succeed. Adolin didn’t press him further for once, and Kaladin was grateful.  
Expert fingers carefully prodded at Adolin’s side, hearing him hiss through his teeth. The fifth rib was prodding dangerously against the skin on his back. He traced it carefully, swiftly feeling the skin on his back, around his side and up to his sternum, feeling for any crunches, or bits or pieces floating out of place. Luckily, he felt none.  
“Nothing broken,” he muttered, glancing back at Adolin whose face was blushed a deep red, a fact that did not escape Kaladin. The princeling breathed a sigh of relief. “Your rib is just displaced. You’re truly lucky.”  
“I don’t feel lucky. Can you heal- what are you doing?” Adolin interrupted whatever his question was, his eyes round as two newly cut spheres, watching Kaladin straddled his legs, inches from sitting on his lap.  
“I need to check your other side, make sure there’s nothing wrong there, and then check your breathing. This way is more comfortable.” Kaladin extended his hands, ignoring the fact that Syl would have probably scolded at him for the lie. Although it wasn’t a lie. Not entirely.  
If it wasn’t a lie, what was it then? Curiosity? Kaladin did not like that word.  
Adolin had blushed, though. Raised as how any highprince should behave, Kaladin was sure the other had never been in such a situation before in his life. So close to someone else, man or woman. So Kaladin, logically, wanted to annoy him, push him to his edge. And then…  
Then… what?  
It was just curiosity. His own selfish reasons, tormenting Adolin to see how far he would go before sending Kaladin storming away in the name of propriety.  
Don’t lie, not even to yourself, a voice startlingly similar to Syl’s scolded him.  
Adolin wasn’t cooperating. Instead of taking Kaladin’s hands, the young man just looked at him as if he stuck himself to the wall.  
That would have been funny if Kaladin could still do it, all things considered.  
“Stop looking at me and give me your hands. This would go smoothly if you just do as I say.”  
Shooting him another glare of mistrust, blue eyes looking from his face down to where he was almost sitting over, he gave up any signs of fight, taking Kaladin’s hands on his own.  
“Thank you,” Kaladin offered, mostly as a peace offering of his own.  
“I don’t like this,” Adolin grunted, his gaze fixated on Kaladin. Something about his eyes made his brain disconnect. “But I do trust you.”  
Kaladin ignored the electricity that travelled down his spine to those words. He just felt more guilty than he liked to admit. He truly should have inspected him immediately after the fall.  
He did his routine inspection on Adolin, same one he did on himself when he first woke up down the darkness. Nothing else seemed out of place. His arms were impeccable, his spine was intact, his left side was sore and his muscles were tense. Stress, mostly. His right arm had reduced mobility, which was to be expected with a dislocated rib.  
“Where did you learn all this?” Adolin whispered, his voice faint even in the echoing caverns.  
“I have military training.” Kaladin’s hands cupped the young man’s face, prodding with his fingers below the mandible, his jaw was intact, even if tense. Even though Adolin didn’t push away, he shut his eyes the moment Kaladin touched his skin. Was he in pain? “Does this hurt?” He moved his fingers slower, more delicately along the other’s jaw.  
“No.” He breathed; voice strained. “And I have that training too, they never taught me this.”  
Ah storms, he shouldn’t have used that excuse with a military princeling.  
“You pick more skills as a bridgeman.” He lied quickly, letting go of his face.  
“You are a terrible liar.” Adolin accused him, opening his eyes with what seemed a great deal of effort. His eyes seemed a shade darker.  
Storms, when had he realized what shade were Adolin’s storming eyes?  
“And you are in terrible pain,” Kaladin countered, cocking an eyebrow at him. “Do you want me to ease your pain or do you want my life story?”  
Adolin pressed his lips in a thin line, glaring at him. For a moment there, Kaladin thought he was going to engage in yet another shouting match, but the princeling just sighed, resting his head against the chasm wall. Taking this as a cue to continue, Kaladin leaned down, pressing his ear against Adolin’s chest.  
Predictably, Adolin tried to push him away once more with his good hand. Kaladin caught his wrist effortlessly, pinning his arm back to the wall, earning a grunt of the princeling. Kaladin glared upwards, and Adolin couldn’t have looked more like a caged animal. The startling revelation of how much Kaladin truly enjoyed that expression on the princeling seemed to freeze him in place.  
“I need to hear your breathing,” He forced the words out with great strain. “A dislocated rib may lead to a punctured lung. This, naturally, would be easier with the right equipment, but I don’t have it. So, unless you are hiding surgeon equipment down your clothes, you will have to be quiet and let me listen to your breathing.”  
They held each other’s gazes for a moment. Adolin flushed face was proving… distracting. His eyes, as blue as the sky, Kaladin noticed, seemed to look inside of Kaladin for… what? Betrayal? A proof that Kaladin was trying to help and not just mocking him?  
“You said you trusted me,” Kaladin murmured, the closeness between burning more than the iron that branded him a slave. “Trust me.”  
Adolin just stared at him, close enough to drive Kaladin positively mad. Had he really just thought that he was the one trying to test Adolin’s limits? The coldness that he could never quite acquire as a surgeon would have been useful in moments like this. Secure, blissful coldness, devoid of emotion. It would have made him able to ignore how warm Adolin body was. How the way he was looking down at him, like a frightened, cornered animal, made Kaladin’s heart squeeze in all the wrong ways. How the places in which their limbs made contact sent jolts of electricity in all the right ways.  
No lies?  
Kaladin did want to test his limits for his own selfish reasons; he had always wanted to. He had dreamed of erasing that smug little smile off his face, of stripping him of the brightlord brat façade and make the real Adolin, the one not tied to honour and laws and his father, come out and face him for once. He truly wanted to push Adolin over the edge.  
But he was just realizing that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to follow him after.  
“I do,” Adolin’s whisper sent a chill down his spine that he couldn’t quite conceal.  
“Breath deep in an out for me.” He instructed, unable to return to his voice completely devoid of emotions. As Adolin obeyed, Kaladin pressed his ear to the right side of his chest, somehow just remembering that the princeling was very much shirtless underneath him. Straining to focus, he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary on his lung. He moved his head to the princeling’s left side, Adolin’s naked skin burning like fire against his face. Kaladin thought he might hear him complain again, but Adolin kept quiet. “Again.” As the princeling obeyed diligently, Kaladin noted nothing out of place either. The only thing that caught his mind was Adolin’s heart hammering away at an alarming speed. Could be stress, could be anything else. “You’re fine,” He concluded, sitting back on his thighs, and therefore on Adolin’s lap, once again. “But your heart rate it’s a little high.”  
“Can you blame me?” Adolin muttered, pinning him down with his gaze once more. How could he do that? Kaladin realized he was still holding Adolin’s wrist, and he quickly released his grip. Blinking, as if he had just noticed as well, Adolin let his arm drop to the floor. “Can you fix it? My rib.”  
“I can snap it back into place,” Kaladin admitted, looking anywhere but at that storming face. “But it won’t magically heal it. The only thing that will fix it is-”  
“If you say rest, I may have to choke you,” Adolin warned. Kaladin found himself grinning sheepishly. “Oh storms.”  
“Look, I have to put it back and It will help. But you will still be in a lot of pain. Until we get out of here you won’t heal properly.”  
Adolin sighed, but nodded in defeat. Without so much as a whine, he obeyed as Kaladin lay him on the floor, wincing in the pain. It was a simple procedure, just apply a little bit of pressure in the right place and the rib pops back on its place. Not a permanent solution, it had to solidify on his own of course, but it would keep it from prodding at the skin and reduce the risk of a punctured lung; which, coincidentally, were both things Kaladin just wouldn’t be able to heal down here. His mind was swimming with the different scenarios of how to treat these more serious ailments if they happened, so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear what Adolin was saying, and only noticing he had missed his words entirely when he found the other staring intently.  
That stare was extremely distracting.  
“What did you say?” Kaladin asked, crossing Adolin’s arms over his chest, mildly distracted still for other reasons entirely.  
“Will this hurt?”  
Voice barely a whisper, Kaladin might have not heard it the second time either. That was a stupid question; it clearly would hurt. Those questions baffled him time after time. All procedures hurt. It surprised him more coming from Adolin, a shardbearer, a supposed master duellist. Kaladin was surprised this wasn’t the first time he had popped one of his ribs.  
Except, all things considered, all his duels were in shardplates. The risk of injury was much lower inside those things. And the princeling was stripped of his armour, just like Kaladin was the first time he had to be down here, in uncharted territory, before the chasms became his.  
And he had been terrified as well.  
“No, it won’t,” Kaladin answered, voice just as soft.  
“You’re a horrible liar.” Adolin accused, not a hint of malice in his voice, and smiling just as bright as always.  
How did he have such a bright smile?  
“It will hurt,” Kaladin admitted, focusing his gaze in his own hands. In Adolin’s hands, his arms, his torso, anywhere but that smile. “But it’s bearable. You’ll endure. You’ll breathe deep and I’ll count to three, alright?”  
“And you’ll just count to one and pop it back into place?” Kaladin made the mistake of looking back at him, and he was still smiling.  
Kaladin found himself smiling as well.  
“When people brace themselves for pain, they usually imagine it worse than it actually is. If it catches you unprepared, you feel it less.”  
Adolin managed to laugh. A raspy, pain filled laugh.  
It sent a chill down Kaladin’s spine either way.  
“That’s chull’s dung and you know it.”  
“It’s true! Just take a deep breath, I’ll count to two and pop it back into place. Deal?” Kaladin conceded. Adolin nodded, his eyes twinkling with delight. How had this happened?  
“I never thanked you,” Adolin added, his gaze hazy, looking at Kaladin with something that almost seemed fondness. “Not properly, for saving my father and me. Back when Sadeas…” He left the thought in the air, frowning at the bitter memory.  
The memory also left a bitter taste in Kaladin’s mouth.  
“You’ll thank me when we get out of this storming pit. I’ll make sure of it.” Kaladin nodded, a smile playing in his lips.  
“With dinner?” Adolin suggested, cocking an eyebrow. Brat. Kaladin smiled even more.  
“And alcohol.”  
Adolin laughed again. Kaladin couldn’t breathe.  
“Ready?” Kaladin whispered. “Take a deep breath.”  
Adolin obeyed. Kaladin popped his rib back into place.  
A growl of pain. Adolin’s hand snatched Kaladin’s forearm with an immeasurable amount of strength. His brow furrowed, his skin a tight shade of pale. Kaladin used his right hand, mildly numb from how strongly Adolin was holding onto him, to massage carefully the area around the rib, knowing it would soothe the discomfort. His left hand cradled Adolin’s head, holding him firm and closer to his own. They foreheads touched and oh storms he was in so much pain. “Look at me. Adolin, look at me.”  
He did. His icy eyes froze him in place, gave him a clarity, a certainty as if infused by a thousand spheres. It gave him the serenity any surgeon should have, the calm any soldier ought to have.  
Nothing had frightened Kaladin more in his entire life.  
“Breathe,” Kaladin’s voice sounded like shattered glass to his own ears, something broken beyond repair, freezing him to his very core as he held the princeling’s chilling gaze unable to look away. Unwilling to look away. “Don’t fight the pain, ride it. Adolin, breathe for me.”  
Adolin obeyed.

Breathe for me.  
Adolin couldn’t sleep.  
The pain had diminished greatly. He could take deep breaths without feeling like his skin would break open at any moment. Breathing was easy, with just a tingle of discomfort at the soreness left.  
Breathe for me.  
But mostly, it was infuriating because every time he did it, those words resonated into his head like the most annoying echo in these storming charms.  
How? How did this happen?  
Adolin was glad to be trapped down here with someone. The bridgeboy, Kaladin, wouldn’t have been his first choice. Not that he was a bad choice either; he knew these chasms, that was obvious. Every brightlord knew that Sadeas made his bridgemen go down the chasms to retrieve whatever was left down there that may be of use; be it weapons, leather or spheres. He wasn’t surprised that the young man was more at ease down in this storming pit that out of it, surrounded by silks, expensive wine and good food.  
But Adolin hadn’t know about… How could he have missed it? How could every single person that had ever looked at Kaladin, ignore it?  
The intensity of this man.  
But he had known about it, in some levels at least. There was not a single task handed to him that the man did half-heartedly. He also knew the bridgeboy, Kaladin, made himself responsible for any single thing that went wrong in back in the camps. He was always so tense, always on edge. So, he should have known. He should have known about the storm brewing constantly behind his gaze, electrifying everything on its path. He should have realized the intensity of his brown’s eyes burning like fire on the skin.  
He had to stop.  
He sounded like those books the women of the court liked to read. He never did, of course, but he heard. Half-heard. They talked about it in his presence, and he had no other choice but to mildly pay attention, especially if the avid reader was a woman he was currently courting.  
Oh, Shallan.  
Oh storms, Shallan. Thinking about her arose a sense of guilt inside. Adolin didn’t want to feel guilty. Feeling guilty for forgetting about his betrothed would mean that Kaladin was… was what? No, he couldn’t afford to go down that trail of thought.  
Shallan. She was a reader too, wasn’t she? No, Adolin was sure she had never read those kinds of books. She wouldn’t know what he was talking about. The writers did, though.  
Maybe the writers had met Kaladin before.  
He needed to sleep.  
Covering his head with his arms, he turned, facing the chasm wall, forcing his eyes closed. His captain—His father’s captain, was resting on the other side of the corridor. Sleeping, naturally, not turning restlessly like Adolin was, musing over eyes and fire and storming useless things!  
And the way Kaladin had looked, sitting on his lap, looking up at him. Angry, dark, demanding.  
He was grateful! For his help, for his aid. Grateful. Adolin would have probably died alone down here, buried under a pile of bodies, under a broken bridge with no way out, if it weren’t for Kaladin. He was a good man and he knew it. But Adolin never asked for this. This closeness.  
This intimacy.  
He needed to sleep.

He didn’t sleep.  
Or at least, his mind slept, but the rest of him didn’t. His body most certainly didn’t.  
In what felt a blink later, Kaladin was nudging his side, his good side bless him, with the butt of his lance. Adolin grunted a mild response, swatting the annoying stick away.  
“Come on princeling, we need to keep moving.” Kaladin’s voice woke him up like an ice-cold bath.  
Or, truthfully, like a honeyed breakfast, like warm drinks on a freezing morning.  
He grabbed his pillow, or more accurately, the pack that he had used as a pillow, and buried his face underneath it. Of course, this took leave to all his provisions falling on his face. Dried meat sticking to his hair, he sat down with an offended huff. Now even inanimate objects had it for him.  
Against all odds, Kaladin laughed at his misfortune. And oh, that laugh. Adolin thought that if someone could bottle that laugh, he would get drunk on it, every single night.  
He needed a cold, freezing, bath.  
It was still dark, not a glimmer of light in the sky. Adolin was unbothered as he packed everything up once again. He was used to waking up earlier than the sun. Military training, as Kaladin would have said. However, it was easier when he had at least a few hours of sleep, and not a few hours of “sleeping-and-turning-restlessly” as had happened. He sat up, grunting at the stiffness of his muscles. “I need a bath.” He declared, feeling dirty and uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons.  
“You’ve been away from civilization for one day,” Kaladin teased, plucking a strip of dried chull meat from his shoulder and popping it into his mouth.  
“Us entitled lighteyes bath more than once a highstorm, you know?” Adolin teased back, stretching his arms as far as the pain in his side would allow him. Storms, it hurt even more than it did last night.  
“In my home town growing up, bathing was once a week,” he crouched down next to him, chewing on the piece of meat. “I think even the lighteyes-” Adolin didn’t catch the rest of the sentence. For some storming reason, Kaladin decided it would be a good idea to get oh so close in front of him, eyes distracted, hair a mess, and just touch his back, his surprisingly delicate fingers softly massaging the sore spot along his ribs. Kaladin’s whole body was almost pressed against him, and every flick of his wrist sent a jolt down Adolin’s spine.  
Completely due to the pain.  
“Are you listening to me?” Kaladin demanded, and Adolin snapped his head back up at him, meeting his levelled gaze.  
Oh, storm that man and those eyes. It was too early for the amount of inner questions that were popping up on Adolin’s mind.  
“If you don’t relax, the pain won’t go away.” Kaladin repeated, even though Adolin didn’t ask him to. So close, too close. “Whenever the pain arises, try to massage the spot, softly. If you feel a bump in the skin, don’t touch it. Massage gently around it. It should make you feel better.” He concluded, standing up. “Now on your feet, we need to make haste. We are trying to beat a highstorm, if you recall.” He tilted his head at him, smirking. “Do I need to help you stand up as well?”  
Adolin threw a piece of meat at his face. Kaladin caught it, grinning as he stepped away.  
Storming man.  
The sky grew brighter as they walked, thankfully letting them know that they had were walking in the right direction. However, Kaladin’s chipper morning mood grew solemn, and he turned back into his own thoughts. Holding against better judgement, Adolin walked up to him, maintaining their pace side by side.  
“What’s on your mind?”  
“That there’s little I wouldn’t do for a little bit of peace,” He answered, his gaze far away, still in his thoughts. “Without anyone bothering.”  
Adolin rolled his eyes. “What happened to the laughing Kaladin from this morning?” From last night?  
His only answer was a shrug, looking from the floor to the sky. They were going in the right direction.  
“Come on,” Adolin tried again, softer this time. “Why do you try so hard to push people away?”  
Another shrug. Adolin sighed in defeat, ready to adjourn last night to a trick of the light, a spur of the moment. Kaladin’s obvious medical training making him softer to pamper Adolin in a moment of need.  
“Maybe I just want to avoid another argument,” Kaladin mumbled, so quietly that Adolin had almost to strain his ears to listen.  
He did hear, though. It made him smile. “I don’t wish to argue with you.”  
Kaladin nodded at him. It was a short, very formal nod, but Adolin could swear he saw his muscles relax, and some of the morning happiness that had possessed him seemed to return. Or maybe it was just Adolin considering the morning improving by each passing moment. 

Adolin was dragging them behind.  
Kaladin carried the vast majority of their bundles. His shardplate, their waterskins, his spear, the spheres. Adolin felt like a feeble maiden carrying a single pouch with a bunch of dried meat that weighted as much as a bunch of dried sticks; and still, he was slowing them down. He noticed that Kaladin walked slower to match his pace, and at each turn Adolin’s pain returned. Walking while rubbing his back wasn’t exactly comfortable, nor quick work. To add more, his shortness of breath had returned, and at each intersection Kaladin took longer than usual to decide which corridor to take, just to let Adolin catch his breath.  
He felt useless.  
He felt a tingle of irritation at the next intersection. It did not improve when he realized, upon looking up, that the sun was wrong.  
“What?” He muttered.  
Kaladin looked back at him, and up to the sky. His face dropped.  
“We are going in the wrong direction.”  
Somewhere along the road they had turned southwards, and they were walking in an almost straight line down that road. For how long?  
So, where were they?  
Kaladin let out a set of curses he hadn’t hear from a single person before in his life. Adolin took a deep breath, calming his nerves, and stuck out his hand. Ten heartbeats, and mist formed into a blade in his hand.  
“What are you doing?” Kaladin asked.  
“It’s about time I make us a climb out of here.” Adolin nodded, using his good hand to settle against the wall. His blade hand trembled terribly.  
“You are most definitely not doing that.” Kaladin shortened the distance between them, only to hold his wrist, like a scorning mother. “We’ve talked about this. I am not letting you climb this wall unprotected. Just take a look at your hand, you can’ t get a sure grip. You’ll fall to your death.”  
“There’s not a better option!” Adolin protested, trying to yank his arm free, only managing a flair of pain on his side once again.  
“What will you do up there anyway? Be exposed to Parshendi? We don’t know how close to camp we are, and the highstorm is coming in…” They both looked up to the sky.  
Four hours, top. Adolin’s heart sank down to his knees. They were not going to make it.  
“Take it then.” Adolin shoved the blade to Kaladin, who shrunk away from it as if it were on fire. “Climb the wall, you can see how far behind we are, maybe call for help.”  
“No.”  
“What?” Adolin demanded, exasperated. “It’s our only option, take the blade.”  
“I will not touch that thing.” Kaladin spat, as if his blade were made of venom.  
“Why storming not? It’s just a blade!”  
“It’s not just a blade! Those things killed more of my friends than any Parshendi army, and for less good reasons. It’s tainted in their blood.” Kaladin spat at him, and Adolin felt as sure as if he had slapped him across the face.  
For a moment, he thought the other might be joking. But he wasn’t. He was completely serious. He was willing to let them die down here because of a silly ideal of him.  
Only it wasn’t that silly. Adolin could understand. He didn’t want to. But he could.  
“We go back then. I’ll take the lead this time.” 

They both knew they weren’t going to make it back in time. Kaladin was gloomily walking behind, Adolin didn’t talk. The pain was getting worse with each step, but he forced himself onwards. Back in the right track, he felt a little better, but there wasn’t any way of knowing just how close to camp they were. If only he could climb… But no, he knew that out there, he would be an easy target to whomever, or whatever was lurking around. Down here, just a target to chasms, and to an imminent death by drowning, crushed by stones and dead bodies.  
“Another storm is brewing over your head,” Adolin noted, overwhelmed by the darkness of his own thoughts. If his mind could muster such vivid images, he could only imagine what Kaladin was seeing in his own.  
The bridgeboy barely looked his way.  
“I’ve doomed us,” he whispered. “I took the lead, and I got us lost.”  
Oh.  
Adolin relaxed his tense muscles, letting himself be almost endeared by his captain, which should have worried him. It didn’t. It just made him want to chase his worries away.  
“Don’t beat yourself up. I should have been paying more attention, instead of sulking through my pain.” He offered in what he hoped was a light-hearted way.  
“I should have been paying attention from the start, not getting distracted. Or getting worried about you.”  
“See? If I hadn’t gotten hurt, you would have been more focused,” Adolin added. “Besides, you’re supposed to worry about me. It’s your job.”  
It his job. To heal him, protect him. Adolin should remember it.  
“It’s my fault we are going to die here.”  
“Kaladin, please-” His words cut short as he gasped for air, a shot of pain leaving his arm useless, and almost crumbling to the ground.  
Kaladin was there in the blink of an eye, holding him, levelling him to the ground. He felt useless once more, depending on someone else for something as vague and as idiotic as to sit down. He should be able to walk this off, like any other time he got mildly injured. But no, he had to go and feel feeble, weak, and in dire need of being taken care of. He could use with a painkiller right at that moment.  
Blessedly, Kaladin didn’t make him take out his shirt. Adolin wouldn’t have been able to live another moment like that. Instead, the bridgeboy swiftly lifted the clothing, his hands like fire on Adolin’s skin, most certainly leaving marks as they brushed him over. His eyes caught his, and he felt the urgent need to gasp for air. How could one single person shatter his ground so? Kaladin, of all people. In these moments Adolin wished he had that same intent murder stare his father had, maybe that way Kaladin’s eyes will just stop staring. But he didn’t stop. And Kaladin’s eyes were too much. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe.  
Breathe for me.  
Adolin snatched Kaladin’s hands away, holding him at a safe arm-length distanc  
e; although it didn’t feel safe. He swore he could still feel that delicious warmth irradiating from his body. Adolin closed his eyes, feeling his face burn up. This wasn’t right.  
“Adolin, what is the matter with you?” From far away, Kaladin’s voice demanded. “You’ve caught a fever, haven’t you? Let me help.”  
“I’m fine.” He lied.  
“You most certainly are not.”  
“I just-” How to explain? He risked a glance, and his breath caught in his throat. How could anyone stare down at his man, and do anything? How did anyone get anything done? “I don’t want you to touch me.” He mumbled, incoherently even to his own ears. “I can’t. You… your eyes-”  
Kaladin recoiled as if slapped. Something changed behind his gaze.  
Stormblessed. Adolin felt he understood now.  
A calm, hovering cloud was replaced by a raging storm, cruel and unforgiving in Kaladin’s eyes. Adolin couldn’t recall when someone had looked down at him with such pure, raw hatred in his eyes.  
“My eyes?” Kaladin spat, yanking his arms away. “You don’t want me to touch you because of my eyes?”  
Adolin had to recognize his choice of words hadn’t been perfect.  
“No-” He started, but Kaladin was not backing up.  
“I thought we understood each other. Storms I thought-” He looked like a caged animal, now more than ever.  
Adolin got to his feet, painfully. “Listen to me.”  
“Why would I listen to any of your words anymore?” Kaladin demanded. Oh storms, oh he was truly hurt.  
“I did not mean it that way!” Adolin pleaded, trying to placate Kaladin. It felt as it trying to placate a feral whitespine.  
“What else could you have possibly meant? That you are so repulsed by the difference on our status that you cannot stand me touching you, princeling?”  
“Kaladin!” Adolin grabbed the taller man by his arms, ignoring the flair of pain on his side. He was almost sure Kaladin would bite both his arms off without any hint of regret. And Adolin thought this man hated him before? That was nothing compared to the storm raging inside of Kaladin at the moment. He could see it, dark clouds brewing, almost hearing the thunder, more powerful that any highstorm, staring him down behind brown eyes. “I did not mean your status. I meant you. Your eyes. Your… everything. You are so intense, all the time. So insufferable insubordinate and tense and I can almost see your thoughts churning around in that head of you as you stare at me. I cannot think, I cannot process and I cannot breathe. It’s too much; you are-” He interrupted himself.  
Oh storms, had he really said all that?  
Kaladin, for the first time ever, seemed at a loss of words, and Adolin felt lost. How could he have broken down so easily? Kaladin was freaking out, obviously. Adolin was freaking out, naturally. They stared at each other, a look of utter bafflement in his captain face, one that probably matched the one on Adolin’s. The storm behind Kaladin’s eyes was gone, and Adolin couldn’t understand for the life of him what was going on behind that, the Almighty forgive him, beautiful gaze.  
Painfully, he released his grip on Kaladin, but the other man moved as if to take his arms back. As if to hold him. And Adolin could crumble.  
And he heard it, a sound of scraping on rock.  
“What-” Turning the corner, a chasmfiend loomed over them.  
And he panicked, but his body moved. Kaladin’s too, holding onto each other, the his shardplate forgotten on the floor as they darted away. He could feel the thing, too close, the walls of the chasm shaking from his pursuit. Bones, twigs, shell and plants cracked and snapped.  
The monster trumped again, a deafening sound.  
Adolin followed Kaladin closely, as he seemed to know where to go. Where could they possibly go to escape this thing? Storms, it could move. He had never expected a thing this large to be so fast, but he had no trouble keeping up with their attempts of escape. This was his home after all, and it was almost upon them; he could feel it right behind…  
He grunted as he felt Kaladin push him against the wall-- no, a corridor. Again, wrong, it was a crack in the wall. Kaladin pushed him backwards as a shadow loomed over them. Adolin grunted as he was being pushed into some twigs and leaves that had been packed into this crack by floodwaters.  
The chasm fell silent. Adolin could only hear Kaladin’s frantic breathing and his own heartbeat. They’d left their entire provisions on the ground, but Kaladin still held onto his spear, his improvised lantern still holding tight to the tip. How did he always have that thing by his side? By the dim light of the spheres he made out Kaladin’s face, staring down at him.  
“You alright?” Kaladin muttered, too close.  
Adolin nodded. Slowly, Kaladin twisted around, pressing his back against Adolin’s chest. He found himself holding him from behind, and found him trembling. Storms, he was trembling as well. The fissure was small, and only a few feet stood from them and the opening. That monster… where was it?  
He gasped, his hands tightening around Kaladin’s waist. Adolin heard him gasp. Up there, higher in the crack, a large, inhuman eye watched them. He couldn’t see the bulk of the chasmfiend’s head, just part of the face and jaw, with that terrible glassy green eye. A large claw tried to force its way inside, and Adolin pressed Kaladin closer to himself. Fortunately, the crack was too small.  
The head withdrew. Scraping rock echoed along the chasm, but it didn’t go far before it stopped.  
“It’s waiting,” murmured Adolin. Some voice in the back of his head said that Shallan would probably be impressed with this information. He should tell her when they got out of here.  
Wishful thinking.  
“How long, you suppose until…?” Adolin asked, looking upwards. The crack didn’t let him see the sky. Kaladin started to move forwards, but Adolin yanked him back, not relenting his grasp on his hips. “The thing is waiting. The moment he sees as little as your hair peaking out of the crack, it will come running to eat you.”  
Kaladin didn’t answer. He saw the muscles of his back tense and he feared some of them might actually break from the strain.  
“For what I remember, I have to assume two hours before the stormwall hits.” Adolin muttered, painfully aware of how his mouth was dangerously close to the other’s shoulder.  
They couldn’t wait. If the highstorm was impossible to survive up in the plains, down here it would be impossibly catastrophic. He could imagine the both of them here, waiting like scared rockbuds, until the waters came crushing down. Waters that would whip them around like rags in a surge through the chasms, smashing them into walls, boulders, churning them with the dead until they drowned or were ripped apart limb by limb…  
What an awful way to die.  
“Let go of me,” Kaladin’s voice, cold as ice, snapped him out of his thoughts. As if bit by fire, Adolin let his hands drop away. Only to hold him away when the captain made to move away. “Stop. I’m not leaving. I just need some space.”  
Adolin stepped back as much as he could, feeling the twigs prod at his back. The pain that flared on his injured side was delicious against the pain that Kaladin’s words arose within him. Kaladin stepped away, just barely, but seemed an impossibly large distance.  
Apparently, he couldn’t quite keep the hurt from his face, because when Kaladin turned to look at him, he almost immediately extended a hand in his direction.  
“Don’t—” Kaladin started, and stopped as if his breath caught in his throat. Adolin was getting familiar with that same feeling. “You were too close. Your hands on my-- and your breath in my neck. I just… You’re distracting too. I need to think to keep us alive.”  
Oh.  
Oh.  
Adolin nodded, not dwelling too much into the meaning of his words. He couldn’t afford to right now.  
He saw Kaladin look towards the opening, the grip on his spear tightening.  
“You are not considering fighting that thing, are you?” Adolin asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.  
“No, I’m considering distracting it while you run the other way.”  
“Whatever for? I’m injured, and the storm will kill me down here. If anything, I should be the bait.”  
“You’re Dalinar’s son,” Kaladin waved him off, treating him like a brat once again. It made Adolin want to choke the life out of him.  
“He has another son,” Adolin argued, stepping closer to the other, bracing himself for another fight.  
Instead, Kaladin looked at him. Truly looked at him. No fire, no storm in his eyes. Just, something so calm, such warmth behind that gaze and Adolin could almost feel his legs buckle beneath his body. Miraculously, he kept himself standing up.  
“You’re too important,” Kaladin muttered. He didn’t add to whom.  
They just stared at each other for what felt an eternity, losing valuable time before the highstorm struck. Adolin didn’t give a damn. Finally, he just nodded.  
Kaladin almost stepped closer, almost closed the distance that separated them, almost rose his arm in his direction. Instead, Adolin saw him turn away, the grip in his spear tight, and walked outside.  
And Adolin counted his heartbeats.  
He saw Kaladin run right, back to where they came from. He saw the chasmfiend follow. As mist solidified in his hand, he dashed forward, slicing one of the monster’s back legs as it passed by him.  
“Come and get me,” He growled at the beast, as it turned away from Kaladin, facing him.  
He heard Kaladin yelling as Adolin ran away, the monster close behind. No time, no room for stances, Adolin just risked slashes as the thing turned the corners in its chase. It was too fast, and Adolin was too injured. Oh he would die down here.  
But if Kaladin survived, he supposed he would die in peace.  
But no, Kaladin had to run after him. The chasmfiend awful shriek as Kaladin stabbed the thing in the back with his spear alerted Adolin. They were both on each side of the monster, but it could easily kill them both. However, that second of confusion gave Adolin the opening to slash another leg, rendering it useless.  
But the monster chased back after Kaladin, who limped wildly back the corridor He was hurt; when had he gotten hurt? He wouldn’t last long. Adolin followed closely from behind, as close as his injury let him. With horror, he saw as the chasmfiend cornered Kaladin against the wall. Too close to swing with his claws, but rearing his head to bite down and eat him and kill him and Adolin growled in pain and horror and he found himself climbing over the useless back leg he had killed on the thing, tripping over the carapace, running over the creature’s back and slamming his blade on its head.  
It collapsed on Kaladin.  
Adolin tripped as the beast toppled to the ground, it’s lifeless corpse occupying the entirety of the corridor. He had released his shardblade as he fell, not to get sliced up, but he quickly started summoning it once again, as he stumbled to his feet.  
“Kaladin?” He whispered, his voice a thin strip of pain.  
It was all legs and claws and he couldn’t see a thing besides the chasmfiend’s body sprawled around him and Kaladin, oh Kaladin.  
There. He revealed his legs as he cut apart the beast to make himself way. They were immobile, the rest of him inside the chasmfiend mouth.  
Please. Please no.  
“Kaladin,” he pleaded, hastening to his side. It was impossible to even try and move the chasmfiend, so, shardblade in hand, he started cutting around what he thought Kaladin’s figure, not body, was. If he so much even grazed his skin Kaladin would…  
“Ow,” a muffled voice from inside the beast made Adolin almost drop his blade again.  
“Kaladin!” He called out, hacking at the thing’s head, even more careful not to cut too close to Kaladin. “Hang on!” Violet ichor spurted out, coating his arms, smelling like wet mold.  
“This is kind of uncomfortable…” Kaladin said.  
“You’re alive.” Adolin answered. “Stop complaining.”  
He was alive. Oh, Stormfather. Alive. How could this storming man be alive?  
“How are you alive?” Adolin almost shouted.  
“I am not sure, considering I almost got impaled by your blade.” Kaladin’s muffled voice hid his smile. “We had the same idea of stabbing it through the brain. Still, how about a warning, next time?”  
“Do you plan to stick your head inside many chasmfiend’s mouths in the near future?” Adolin retorted, cutting more of the mandible.  
“With you one can never know.”  
Adolin smiled, truly smiled as he reached inside the whole he had cut. With some work, he managed to help Kaladin wiggle out the side of the mouth. Covered in ichor and blood, face pale from apparent blood loss, he looked like death itself.  
Adolin could kiss him.  
“Storms,” He whispered, holding Kaladin close as he cleaned a bit of space on the ground. He winced as Adolin laid him on the ground.  
“Bind my leg,” Kaladin said weakly. “The rest of me should be fine. Heal right up…”  
Adolin cut the sleeves of his shirt, adding that he was ruining a perfectly good piece of clothing to save Kaladin’s life. His captain smiled as he instructed the way to tie his leg, tightly. He seemed to think he wouldn’t need a tourniquet. Adolin listened to him, after all, he was sure he has more medical training that any other man in his father’s army. With the remaining cloth, Adolin bind the wound on his side, where the chasmfiend had started to rip him in half as it bit. After, he sat down next to the man, drained and cold on his own account. Kaladin wouldn’t be walking on that leg anytime soon.  
Kaladin took a deep breath next to him, resting on the cold ground. “Two hours until highstorm,” he whispered. “You were right.”  
Adolin couldn’t bring himself to be smug about it. He looked upwards; it was almost dark. “We killed a chasmfiend, but we are dead anyway. How unfair.”  
“Seems like so,” Kaladin answered. Then he groaned as he sat up.  
“Shouldn’t you…?”  
“I’ve had worse wounds than this,” Kaladin waved him off.  
Adolin just cocked an eyebrow in his general direction. Kaladin opened his eyes, he looked dizzy.  
“I have,” he insisted. “That’s not just soldier bravado.”  
Adolin believed him. “How often?”  
“Twice,” he admired, then extended his hands towards Adolin, as if to ask for help standing up.  
“You are not going anywhere on that leg.” Adolin shook his head.  
“You are not suggesting I sit here and wait for our imminent death? Or are you offering to carry me?”  
Adolin considered the idea, finding it incredibly appealing. Kaladin mustered enough strength to smack his arm.  
“Do not dare,” Kaladin’s warning was ineffective, as he was smiling.  
“I would never,” Adolin smiled back, stumbling back onto his feet. “But I think it’s time for me to climb. I can use the chasmfiend’s corpse as a start, carve ourselves a shelter on the rock.”  
Kaladin started to complain, but Adolin cut him with a wave of his hand, as his shardblade appeared on his hand. His grip was light, but solid.  
“I am not letting you die down here, Kaladin. You’re important too.” His captain looked up at him, and Adolin grinned. “Besides, you went and got yourself half-chewed by a chasmfiend. I have to be stupidly heroic as well.”  
Kaladin rolled his eyes, but he smiled, and offered no further complains. They both knew they were dead either way.  
So Adolin climbed laboriously up the chasmfiend’s body and took a deep breath. Then, he started to chop at the rock.  
It was hard work. His blade was enormous and not made for this kind of work. But, bit by bit, he made steps on the wall, wide enough for him and Kaladin to climb after. He ignored the pain on his side, which was worse each time he raised his arm to chop at the rock over his head. So up he went, handhold after handhold. It was sweaty work. Eventually, he hung awkwardly over the water line, high enough so the waves wouldn’t beat them terribly. There, he began hacking out sections of rock, trying to cut them so they wouldn’t tumble back onto his head.  
“You’re doing great!” Kaladin called up to him. “Keep at it!”  
“When did you get some peppy?” he shouted.  
“Ever since I assumed I was dead, then I suddenly wasn’t.” Kaladin left his words hanging in the air.  
“And?” Adolin insisted. “I feel like there’s another reason.”  
“Well,” Kaladin admitted, and he could almost see the smirk on his face as he spoke. “I am enjoying the view from down here if I’m being honest.”  
Adolin’s grip on the rock tightened, his whole body blushing furiously. “Are you trying to make me fall?” He shouted, and he heard Kaladin chuckle below. Of course, that made him chuckle.  
Shaking his head, he continued the hard work, but, admittedly, with a goofy grin in his face. Storming man. Digging onto the stone was more difficult than he had imagined, and the angle on his blade wasn’t made for this kind of work.  
After an hour of frantic work, he managed to craft a semblance of a refuge. He didn’t manage to get it as hollow as he had wanted, but it would fit the both of them. Not comfortably, but it would had to do. With Kaladin’s leg, he couldn’t afford to lose more time, as his climb would be painfully slow. Drained, he crawled back down his improvised ladder one last time and flopped on the chasmfiend’s back amid the rubble. His arms felt exhausted, but nothing he hadn’t experienced before.  
“Done?” Kaladin asked from the chasm floor.  
“As done as it can be,” Adolin answered. “It will fit us both at least.”  
Kaladin was silent.  
Adolin looked over the chasmfiend, narrowing his eyes at the boy. “You are coming inside the hole I just carved Kaladin, Stormfather help me. We are not having a conversation of you sacrificing your pretty face in the name of the kingdom. Understood?”  
“I’m not sure if I can walk, Adolin,” Kaladin said with a sigh. “Let alone climb.”  
Adolin severed a vine off the wall. It was resistant. He tied up one extreme to one the legs of the chasmfiend, letting the other fall over. “You’re going,” Adolin threatened, climbing down the corpse of the monster. “Even if I have to carry you.”  
Kaladin looked at him, then grinned, face covered in dried violet ichor that he’d wiped away as best he could. “You know what? I’m starting to think I’d like to see that.” Sighing, he looked back up. “You’re really going to make me climb that.”  
“Yes,” Adolin nodded. “For perfectly selfish reasons.”  
He looked at him.  
“Look at me,” Adolin signalled to himself. “I’m battered, exhausted, dirty, and ragged. I am not letting the last thing you see in your life is me in this poor state. It’s very undignified. I should look my best.”  
“You always do.” Kaladin answered.  
Adolin ignored whatever his entrails were doing as he signalled to the vine. “Climb up, I’m going to retrieve my shardplate, it shouldn’t be far.” Kaladin open his mouth to protest, but Adolin was already moving away. “And when I come back you better be up in my lovely shelter or so the Almighty help me I’m choking you.”  
He didn’t hear what Kaladin said in response, but he truly wished he had.  
The shardplate bundle was indeed not far away, but the trek there and back had seemed eternal. He didn’t know how he would manage to climb, dragging that thing over his shoulder as well, but he simply could not leave it here to be wiped away. In the distance, he heard rumbling. Not good…  
Blessedly, Kaladin was up in the shelter. Even from the distance, his face was pale from the strain.  
“Come on!” He yelled.  
Adolin tied up the bundle around his shoulder to free both his hands, leaving the thing tilting dangerously around his back. Not good. He pulled himself up with great strain, his right side acting up in pain. But if Kaladin had pushed himself up with his injuries he wasn’t about to complain about his bruises and cuts.  
Below, water trickled down the chasm. Then it started to gush.  
Wind howled through the corridors, a haunting, eerie sound that called through the many rifts. Like the moaning of spirits. All around him, plants withdrew, vines twisting and pulling back. Adolin grunted, sweating, his whole body tense with pain and exhaustion, his fingers trembling. He pulled himself another rung, and Kaladin reached his hand down.  
The stormwall hit.  
Adolin caught Kaladin’s hand. The effort of hauling Adolin over to the shelter made Kaladin grunt, his muscles strained to the point of exhaustion. Some part of Adolin’s mind couldn’t help but notice just how nice Kaladin’s arms were. What were they feeding these soldiers?  
Both of them drenched, they rested against the cold hard wall, catching their breath. Apparently, Kaladin had left his spear below, but his spheres were illuminating the cave near the entrance, so they could barely see each other. After a moment, Kaladin, who couldn’t seem to be able to sit down and be, moved awkwardly, his leg in a really bad shape, to rest with his back against the farther end of the cave where Adolin had thrown the shardplate bundle. He outstretched in front of him, leaving Adolin little to no space to sit up straight.  
“Do you mind?” He grumbled, to which Kaladin responded by taking off his shirt.  
He probably was running a fever; this could only be a hallucination.  
“Take off your shirt, and sit with your back against me.” Kaladin instructed, ever devoid of emotion.  
Adolin thought of a million ways of refuting, but none of them were valid enough. He knew what Kaladin meant, of course. Skin-on-skin contact was the most effective way of keeping warm. Besides, he was tired of fighting him. With some awkwardness on his side, he sat down between Kaladin’s legs. The captain helped remove his shirt over his sore shoulder. Resting his weight against the other man’s skin, he found himself shivering. Adolin wasn’t sure how much of it was due to the cold.  
“I thought you’d complain more about It,” Kaladin mused, breath hot against the back of his neck.  
“I’m also a soldier, I’ve done this a million times,” Adolin answered, trying to keep the tremble from his voice. He could feel his mind slipping away from sanity.  
“A million times?” Kaladin chuckled, a low sound that Adolin could feel forming in his chest rumbling up his throat. He was going insane.  
“Well, sometimes,” Adolin admitted, tilting his head sideways, itching away from Kaladin’s lips “Well, once or twice. Twice.”  
“I have to know that story.”  
Adolin rolled his eyes, flush creeping to his face. He tried focusing on his hands, but it was hard, Kaladin’s being so close. They were balled into fists, he noticed, clenched tight against his own legs. Tense, on edge.  
“I was with my father,” Adolin started, not even quite knowing why he talked. Huddled together, frightened, stranded, maybe he just wanted Kaladin to relax with him, just a little, just like before. “We were on an expedition. We got stranded in the middle of nowhere, separated from the group. A storm hit, not a highstorm mind you. But we were still damp and cold without shelter, so…”  
Kaladin hummed in amusement. The vibrations on his chest sent a chill down Adolin’s spine, and Kaladin leaned closer. “I cannot imagine your father cuddling you like this in a storm, no matter how much I try.”  
“Honestly? I wouldn’t have imagined you doing it either.”  
Kaladin laughed, the sound filling their cave for a moment with something else than rain and thunder. “Excellent point. What was the second time?”  
Oh, here we go. “Actually, that was the second time,” Adolin winced, almost feeling the curiosity spike on Kaladin. “I was twenty, not so long ago.”  
“My age,” Kaladin mused, and Adolin realized he hadn’t known that piece of information up until that moment. He had guessed they were about the same age, but Kaladin sometimes looked so much older, haunted, pained. He was just Renarin’s age. “What was the first time? It has to be a fantastic story for you to ignore it.”  
Adolin braced himself, taking a deep breath. As deep as his injured side allowed him.  
“I was around fifteen…” He started. The very memory of it caused him to cringe down into himself in embarrassment. “I was already used to expeditions, but this one was the longest I had ever been to back then. After a full day out, I got separated from the group when a heavy storm hit. There was a rock cave nearby that could be used as a refuge, luckily.” He winced, here we go. “The thing is, I was stranded there with my cousin Jasnah.”  
“Oh my-” Was all Kaladin could manage before bursting into laughter.  
Such a pure sound, it roared over the thunder crashing outside. Despite the embarrassment of the memory, it made Adolin smile, twisting his neck to watch his captain. That wide smile, black curls barely clinging to the sides of his face, barely illuminated by the spheres. Such a beautiful picture.  
“It was awful, it was the worst experience of my life,” Adolin moaned, wanting to bury his face away, and yet not being able to keep his eyes away from Kaladin for a single moment. “And I was so young you know. It was the very first time I saw- well” that caused another fit of laughter for Kaladin, Adolin grinned wider despite himself. “And the worst thing is, she was so technical about it, you know? ‘Oh, it’s pure biology you see’ and all that. It was mortifying.”  
Kaladin couldn’t stop laughing, hunching over, his chest plastered all over Adolin’s back. He buried his face on Adolin’s shoulder, stifling his uncontrollable laugh. He found he didn’t mind. “Stop it! I was horrified for years!” That only caused his fit to grow larger. Adolin could only stare.  
“What about you?” Adolin wondered, Kaladin just looked at him, without moving away from his shoulder. “When was the first time you saw…?”  
“Breasts?” Kaladin rolled his eyes, almost laughing at Adolin. “If you must know, it’s not a fun story.”  
“Tell it to me anyway. I can’t stand the rain out here.” Adolin pleaded.  
Kaladin was quiet for so long that Adolin feared he wouldn’t talk.  
“My father’s a surgeon,” he explained, his voice a whisper. “So the first time I was a woman naked, well, she was dying on the table. She didn’t make it.”  
Adolin took one of his hands between his, he couldn’t help it.  
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Kaladin didn’t shy away.  
“I was supposed to become one too.” Kaladin frowned, looking around them. “Then all of this happened.”  
And Kaladin talked. He talked about his life. How he was enlisted in an army, who’s he wouldn’t say. How his brother died due to incompetence of soldiers. How he got betrayed, belittled, hurt and sold into slavery. The horrors he suffered in Sadeas’ army. His struggles, his will to die. And how he found himself with the men of Bridge Four. How Kaladin had saved them, and they saved him in return. Kaladin laid open his life story to him.  
Adolin returned the favour. He didn’t talk about his life, it would seem like rubbing it in Kaladin’s face. He did speak of that moment in the Tower, when they were lost. When Sadeas betrayed them and he found himself alone and afraid. How he was terrified for himself, for his men. How he wished he could save them all. Terror for his father, far away in the battlefield. Terror for Renarin, alone and afraid back home. He had never been so scared in his whole life.  
“And then you… your men,” Adolin whispered. “Thank you. Truly, thank you.”  
Adolin had rested his head back on Kaladin’s shoulder at some point. Kaladin’s arms were wrapped around his waist. They sat in silence that seemed to stretch on forever. The cave was dark, the spheres ran out of light, so they sat quietly, the only company each other’s breathing.  
The tide was relentless, carrying bodies of humans, Parshendi, and the husk of the massive chasmfiend, all passing by in front of them. For a while, he mused Kaladin to be asleep. What an image that would be, the captain cuddled up, falling asleep against him. However, he felt one of Kaladin’s hands brush lightly against his side. Distracted, Adolin barely looked over his shoulder, but couldn’t make out his expression.  
“How’s your side?” Kaladin whispered, his breath warm against the coldness of the night.  
“Sore,” Adolin admitted. “How’s your leg?”  
“Fine.” Kaladin very much lied.  
He was about to call out his blatant lie when he felt him shift, the hand that was oh so gently caressing him moving up to his sore back, causing Adolin to gasp in surprise. If he heard, he blessedly ignored it, choosing to rub his thumb over the sore spots around his rib. Storming man. Adolin was half convinced he was doing it on purpose. Tormenting him. Making him lose his mind, and spiral out of control. But by the Almighty that felt good. It diminished his pain almost immediately, until he applied too much pressure, causing Adolin to hiss in pain, moving away from the touch.  
He didn’t go fair. Kaladin’s right arm hold him back in an instant, pushing him back against his chest, his hand firmly planted over Adolin’s chest.  
“Relax” Kaladin’s voice growled dangerously close to his ear.  
How? Adolin wanted to whine. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Never. But how could anyone relax like this? The hand on his chest relaxed, and Adolin didn’t move away. He willed himself to relax. He took deep breathes as he tried, unsuccessfully, to calm himself. He opened up his hands, he had the balled into fists so tight that he was convinced there was blood on his palms. Not knowing what to do with them, he rested one on his own lap, the other on Kaladin’s thigh. He felt the other tense almost immediately.  
“Relax,” Adolin mocked. He felt the captain grunt in response. “You know, I think I’m getting quite used to understand your grunts. That surely meant, ‘keep quiet princeling or I’ll throw you out of this shelter’”  
He felt Kaladin chuckle, releasing some tension. In retaliation, or at least it felt like it, Kaladin’s hand on his very naked chest, slowly went up his shoulder, tracing every bit of skin between his arm, his collarbone and up his neck, causing Adolin to shiver helplessly once again. Oh, this was torture. “Relax” his captain murmured, demanded, again, and Adolin could swear he felt his lips trail the outline of his ear.  
This was dangerous.  
“You weren’t taught this as a surgeon, were you?” Adolin whispered accusatory. He barely noticed that Kaladin was no longer massaging his injured rib. His hand was just there, surely burning a patch into his skin.  
Even in the darkness, even without being to see that storming face, Adolin could still imagine that smirk, those storming eyes looking down and rooting him on the spot. Somehow Kaladin managed to take Adolin’s breath away.  
“No,” His captain murmured “This is for my own selfish reasons.”

Dalinar ran the entire way.  
Some of the men on the triage pavilion saw Dalinar and saluted, thankfully making way for him over the sea of people crammed near the entrance. The blue parted like waters blown in a storm.  
And there they were. Ragged, hair matted in snarls, face scratched and leg wrapped in an improvised bandage. Kaladin sat on a triage table and had removed his uniform coat, which his son was wearing, sitting on a table of his own not far away from each other.  
Kaladin looked up as Dalinar approached,, and then moved to pull himself to his feet.  
“Soldier, don’t--” Dalinar begun, but Kaladin didn’t listened. He hauled himself up tall, using a spear to support his bad leg. Then he raised hand to breast, a slow motion, as if the arm were tied with weights. It was, Dalinar figured, the most tired salute he’d ever seen.  
“Sir,” Kaladin said.  
“How…” Dalinar said. “You fell into a chasm!”  
“He fell face-first,” Adolin said, managing to sit up on his table. The boy looked exhausted, as ragged as the captain, but with less threatening injuries. “Fortunately, he is particularly hard-headed.”  
His son smiled, Dalinar almost moved to hug him, oh he had been so worried. But before that he saw as his captain looked back towards Adolin, a smile of which he had never seen on his face. For a moment, such fondness passed between the two of them that Dalinar dared not interrupt.


End file.
